The NICEities of government health care
Here’s a good description of the government agency known as “NICE,” which makes decisions connected with health care and expense in Britain—including how much a life is worth.
Warning: it’s not very nice.
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
Looks to me as if the party who is not so NICE in this equation is the pharmaceutical industry.
How in the world can any insurance company or government support these hideously expensive treatments without going belly up?
It is telling that where NICE has stuck by its guns, the pharmaceutical companies have lowered their prices.
Yes, Beth, the pharmaceutical companies aren’t sacrificing enough, are they? Price controls are the answer, you say? But I bet that if they were instituted, the drive to develop new drugs would end. And then the government would have to take over the drug industry as well.
The point is that with a single-payer system there are sacrifices that most people in this country would not want to put up with. Skyrocketing health care costs will be difficult to control either way—with our present haphazard but private system, or with a lot of government involvement. It’s just that the amount of choice, and the details, and who makes the decisions, would be different in each case. Personally, I would rather have the choices involved in private insurance and take my chances.
The pharmaceutical companies’ fault? Okay Beth, if they’ve got such a cushy deal, why don’t you start one and make lots of easy money? Magic is expensive – has been since the middle ages.
An interesting irony is that in CS Lewis’s science-fiction novel That Hideous Strength (1943, I believe) the front organization for a diabolical British group of pseudoscientists was the NICE: National Institute for Creative Experiment.
Neo,
I would like to see a comparison of the costs to develop and bring the drug to market versus what portion of the pharmaceutical companies price is profit.
I am not against them making a profit. You are correct in that it helps spur further research. However, I tend to be as suspicious of the pharmaceutical companies as I am of the government.
The article also noted that in other European countries they would have the option of paying a portion to recieve the drugs Mr. Hardy needs.
I don’t understand why NICE would not help if the Hardys were willing to pay for a portion themselves.
Having a government agency (i.e. non-medical personnel) make that call based strictly upon economics is what I don’t like. Additionally, I’ll bet that had Mr. Hardy been politically connected, a way would have been found to get him that treatment. Had he been wealthy the point would have been moot, since he simply would have purchased the medication.
However, it seems to me that in either system, we pay. We either pay at the point of delivery or we pay through our taxes.
Reminds me of this:
N.I.C.E., the National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments
From CS Lewis.
Having recently held a contract position in a major pharmaceutical company I can say from my own observation:
As it is now – bringing a new drug to market in the US is time consuming (ten years from concept to market is not unheard of), expensive (several trials over several months or years held around the globe), and heavily regulated (another cost!).
Right now a lot of the world, not just the U.S., benefits from the for-profit pharmaceutical market in the United States. If we take away this profit, new drug development will come to an end in the U.S. or it will be taken over by the government because NO one will be willing to invest their money in something that doesn’t pay.
Another possiblity is that other countries might take over the development of new drugs as their socialist governments might be more willing to invest in drug research. And it will be medicines that benefit them, not you.
Do you really want to be dependent on our government or other countries for your medicines?
But I did not say price controls were the answer.
I merely asked this:
How in the world can any insurance company or government support these hideously expensive treatments without going belly up?
I don’t have the answer. Do you?
Another question. Don’t private insurance companies have some method of determining what drugs and treatments they will cover?
I am not a proponent of government run health care. I merely felt that in the article on NICE, the pharmaceutical companies came across sounding worse than the agency.
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